Halo 3is the third of the Halotrilogy that follows the story of
Spartan 117, otherwise known as Master Chief. Halo 3 was released on
September 25, 2007 in North America
and a number of other countries, and grossed
over $300 million in its first week of sales. Bungie kept the development of
Halo 3 under wraps for almost a year and a half before finally releasing a
trailer for the game at the E3 convention in 2006 that had the gaming community
looking forward to the release of Halo 3.

Bungie and Microsoft
unfortunately had to deal with numerous incidents of the game either being
ripped and then posted on the internet
or outright sold before its official
launch. Some of these were genuine mistakes on the behalf of retailers, but
others were outright theft of the game and the developers took severe action
against gamers who were caught downloading or playing the game before its
official launch date.

Halo 3 was met with mixed
reviews. Many fans were disappointed by the cliffhanger ending in Halo 2
and were happy with the play out of the story in Halo 3 . However a large
number of critics felt the game was too short in content and that the storyline
could have been stretched out. Despite some critical reviews, Halo 3
still managed to garner a number of awards, including several Game of the Year
awards.

The Story:

At the end of Halo 2, fans
were left with a somewhat confusing cliffhanger. The Elite race of the Covenant
were now working with humanity and their forces were being headed up by The Arbiter. Master Chief had gone off on another ship in pursuit of a Covenant
spiritual leader and was headed back to Earth. Johnson, Keyes, and the Arbiter
managed to stop the rest of the Covenant from firing the Halo ring, and barely
escape the Gravemind
who controls the dreaded parasitic army known as The Flood. And poor Cortana
is left behind and is last seen becoming the focus of
the Gravemind’s attention.

Halo 3 picks up on Earth
where Sergeant Major Johnson joins up with Master Chief and they fight their way
towards one of the command bases where Commander Keyes is now in charge. The
Covenant have unburied a Forerunner artifact
outside of the devastated city of
New Mombasa
and Commander Keyes has come up with a last ditch effort plan to
stop the Covenant from activating it. Unfortunately, humanity is too late to
stop this from happening and the firing of the artifact creates a massive
slip-space portal in which the Covenant fleet retreats to. Before humanity can
give chase, a Flood infected carrier crashes onto Earth, and the Elites and
humanity are forced to deal with that threat first.

During the fight to stop the
Flood, Master Chief comes across a badly damaged message from Cortana. Master
Chief, who has been haunted by his decision to leave Cortana behind, is now
determined to go back for her and to stop the Covenant in the process. A small
fleet of humans and Elites
are formed and they head into the portal. T hey find
themselves outside the Milky Way galaxy, at an immense structure called the
Ark. The Ark has the capability to activate all the Halo rings, and with the
Covenant and the Gravemind already there, it’s up to Master Chief and his allies
to stop them from activating the Ark.

It is a
brutal battle to the bitter end, and while Cortana is recovered, it is apparent
she has suffered while in captivity to the Gravemind. There are several
character deaths along the way, making the inevitable victory bittersweet.
While the final Boss Battle is a bit anti-climactic, the finale definitely
boosts the adrenaline as the Ark self destructs all around you while you try and
make a frantic drive towards your only means of escaping alive.

Gampeplay:

Where to start? Halo 3
kept the basics of the previous games but added so much more to it. Controls
were switched up slightly as Bungie added a new feature to the game: the ability
to carry a deployable item. Various shields, lifts, cloaks, or drone cannons
were amongst some of the items now able to be added to your inventory and then
deployed for a single use at critical moments. Also added to the basic player
loadout were new grenade slots. The standard frag and sticky grenades were
still in play, but now a player could also pick up and use brute spikes
grenades, and fire canisters that came in handy when a horde of Flood were after
you.

New weapons we also available for
use including the Spartan Laser, which takes several seconds to prime before
firing but can destroy almost anything with one shot. Dual wielding two weapons
became more refined, and most of the original weapons went through some
modifications to become slightly more improved as well. New vehicles were also
introduced into the game, while the mechanics of several of the originals were
upgraded tremendously. Most notably controls for the Scorpion tank, and the
Warthog
were improved immensely- which considering how much time you spend in
both, this was a crucial decision.

Bungie also spiced up the
Campaign a bit with an Easter Egg hunt
of sorts. Skulls
were hidden throughout
the game for players to find. Discovering these skulls lead to unlocking
achievements and once accessed and activated via the start menu, added modifiers
to the game. These modifiers ranged in effects and difficulty. Some made no
change in difficulty or scoring during the campaign, but made for a more amusing
gameplay with certain sound effects
and commentary being stepped up. Other
skulls added a considerable amount of challenge to gameplay as well as help
boost your scoring ability once activated. A second hunt of sorts (along with
being an achievement to unlock) is finding and accessing a series of computer interfaces
throughout the game.

Speaking of Achievements, Bungie
also created a wide range of achievements for players to strive after. Some
being fairly easy in accomplishment, and others taking several brutal and
frustrating hours that can try even the most veteran of gamers. As they added
map packs, Bungie also added several new Achievements to give gamers new things
to strive for long after the game was originally released.

The multiplayer aspect of Halo
3, while drastically improved overall, was met with some criticism by
Halo fans. The original maps and subsequent maps released thereafter were
plagued with several bugs that players could exploit during matches to their
advantage. Players could fight either in the social matches or in ranked
matches, but the original ranking system had a bug that also allowed players to
’boost’ by backing out of a game early while their team was still ahead and be
awarded the XP’s needed to count towards ranking up. Over time most of these
issues were addressed in updates or overhauling the ranking system however, and
‘boosting’ became near impossible to achieve afterwards.

New features
were added to the multiplayer aspect of the game which made Halo unique and got
the fans more involved. One such feature was “Forge”
which allows players to
create and customize their own maps for multiplayer use. After some time,
Bungie -who monitors all online gameplay - started taking some of the best fan
created maps and game-types and adding them into the rotation of play lists. A
feature was also added that allowed the player the ability to go back and watch
films of either campaign or multiplayer matches and saving film clips of your
best kills or funniest deaths, and also create screen grabs of your most
memorable moments. Another fun addition was that you could share these clips
and grabs with your friends and the rest of the Halo community, and
Bungie created a program called Halo Waypoint
in which the company celebrated
some of the best clips with recognition in their weekly updates.

My Opinion:

Halo 3 was one of those
games where people either loved it or hated it. In talking with other gamers, I
found very few who didn’t have strong feelings one way or another. Personally,
I loved the game, but then when Halo 3 came out I had just gotten back
into gaming and had crammed through the first two games on the original Xbox
and
Fable. Halo was the first game I played on the
Xbox 360, and I had only
been back into gaming for a few months by then. The difference in graphics,
playability, sound, etc was so incredible that I doubt I could really give a
truly unbiased opinion. When I upgraded my TV
and added a Surround Sound system, I will freely admit that Halo 3’s intro scene was what I played
several times over as I adjusted the controls and drooled over the cinematic
glory before me.

Epic new experience aside though,
there were a lot of things that I truly enjoyed about the game itself that made
the whole experience of playing it a great one. The first is the story. I love
shooters, but I am also a sucker for a good story. And after following the
partnership between Spartan 117 and his AI, I was dying to know what was going
to happen to her after the ominous ending in Halo 2. The fact that
Cortana ‘haunts’ the Master Chief throughout the first half of the game really
built up the strength of their relationship. The writers also tied everything
up pretty nicely, and there was none of the confusion that I felt in Halo 2.
I loved he ending of the game because it wrapped up the story arc, but left
things open for the continuation of Master Chief’s story.

Like many gamers I did find the
campaign to be a bit on the short side - I finished the game in about 8 hours.
However all the extras that Bungie threw into this made the re-playability
factor extremely high and worthwhile. The hunt for and even just trying to get
a few of the skulls presented some exciting and unique challenges. Locating all
the terminals and reading some of the cryptic data on them was also
interesting. Several of the Achievements required one to party up with their
friends and spend a few hours laughing and cajoling one another as you attempted
to get through a few difficult sections.

Halo 3 was also the first
time I had attempted multiplayer on Xbox LIVE. I later went back to play
Halo 2 while it was still available on the servers to compare and I have to
say that the game-play on Halo 3 was incredible. Yes, there were some
glitches and bugs that were frustrating until Bungie fixed them, but the overall
experience was incredible. While I was not proficient, nor did I have the time
or patience to create new maps and games in the Forge world, several of my new
LIVE friends were. I admit to spending many nights with a few of my buddies
laughing and just having fun on some of the crazy and insane maps and contests
they thought up. That was another thing about multi-player that I loved -
meeting people from all over the world. Like any online gaming, there were
those who took the game a tad too seriously, but I met some fun and incredible
cool people through LIVE and several of them are good friends down to this day.

As for overall game-play and
controls, I have mixed reviews on that. I was happy that they refined the
vehicle control and that new equipment was added that could be accessed by the
player. But they went and changed the controls…AGAIN. Unfortunately, that is a
complaint that pretty much holds through ever Halo game made so far.
There was some ability to adapt your controls to your preferences, but nothing
that moved them to original settings from Halo 2. Since a good portion
of your time is spent in vehicles however, I do appreciate the increased
drivability of the vehicles. In fact of all the Halo games to date, the
Warthog and Scorpion handling in Halo 3 are my favorites.

The graphics were a huge step up
from the previous Halo games. While the game itself wasn’t created in
HD, the Xbox 360 can upscale it to 1080p. Despite not being HD, the various
other techniques and engines used to create the lighting, depth, and dynamic
range of the game make Halo 3 one of the most stunning early Xbox 360
games to play. The sound in the game will blow you away as well. All Xbox 360
games support 5.1 surround sound, but Bungie put a lot of time and effort into
the sound, dialogue, and music for the game. The commentary by the NPC’s was
hilarious throughout the game. And the higher the difficulty you played the
more…interesting it would get. In surround sound, intense firefights and
battles were made all the more epic as bullets, plasma, and vehicles roared
around you. Martin O’Donnell
once again composed the music for the game. It
was yet another brilliant score that carried throughout the entire game
enhancing the player’s emotional response at any given moment.

Overall,
Halo 3 was a definite success in my book. It was a great wrap up by Bungie
to this story arc. I was a little sad that they left it open because Bungie
made it clear that they were no longer going to develop any more games based on
Master Chief’s experience. Thankfully they sold the rights to 343 Industries
who will be picking up the story and continuing it in a game due to be released
late 2012.